Magnetic Field Tolerant Low-Cost Large Area Photodetectors

Robot Nose Corporation has been developing a tool for rapid additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) of palm-sized particle detectors. This tool uses a laser polymerization process with unique optics to make tiny holes in a plate with very high precision. These plates are then processed with special coatings to turn them into useable ôamplifiersö for particles called micro channel plates or MCPs. Argonne in parallel has been working on their next generation ultrafast photomultiplier tube (PMT) for detecting light, which can be a signature of some particles from nuclear physics experiments. While they are on track to having success with this PMT, the cost of the MCPs is very high. They are also affected by the magnetic field in the experimental environments intended, and may have problems with background signals due to radioactive elements in the glass typically used to make MCPs. Argonne also has a key technique called plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition that will be part of this research. Robot Nose Corporation and Argonne National Laboratory will therefore work together in phase I to pioneer 3d printed MCPs and incorporate these in an Argonne PMT. We expect such a device to be an excellent Cherenkov detector capable of operation in the high magnetic fields and with a cost of at least 5x lower than is possible with current commercial hardware. The expertise and technology that will make this new development possible are uniquely available at Robot Nose and Argonne, and our combined team will be able to efficiently investigate this concept and bring it to market. Finding and delivering to a broader market, for example in advanced air filters, should yield further cost reductions due to the large demand and ability to quickly scale the technology, which will further benefit the core DOE nuclear physics customers.